Episode 42 - Healing Religious Trauma with Sarah Chann

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“How do you get over God trauma aka religious trauma so you can have an intimate relationship with the divine again?”

In answer to this listener's question, Cara invited a very special guest, Sarah Chann, for an intimate and enlightening conversation about dealing with religious trauma and re-establishing a genuine connection with the divine.

Sarah shares her personal journey of dealing with anger towards the divine, her experiences with faith and trauma, and how she came to her ultimate understanding of God as a force of unconditional love.

Sarah's work, which is grounded in the body, emphasizes addressing past traumas and unresolved issues that are oftentimes stored in the body.

Cara and Sarah discuss the concept of religious or God trauma, and how to overcome it through a deep, intimate relationship with the divine.

They also discuss their individual spiritual paths, the concept of God, unconditional love, sin, and their approach to understanding and experiencing the divine through nature and their internal sense of spirit.

As Cara promised in the episode, here’s a guided meditation for Feeling Divine Love. This is an excerpt from a live call.

www.caraviana.com/present3

00:00 Introduction and Meeting Sarah
01:03 The Idea of Inviting Sarah to the Podcast
02:48 Sarah's Unique Approach to Healing
05:02 The Role of Divine in Healing
07:26 Exploring the Concept of Fractures with God
08:56 Sarah's Personal Experience with God and Trauma
26:00 The Misplaced Anger Towards God
30:37 Personification of the Divine
34:47 Understanding Sin and Alignment with God
37:34 Childhood Experiences and Personal Beliefs
44:50 The Fear of God's Rejection
49:01 Finding Connection with the Divine
54:47 The Journey of Healing and Transformation
55:52 The Power of Love and Self-Worth
01:02:30 Final Thoughts and Reflections

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About Sarah Chann ~

Sarah Chann is an intuitive guide and transformational coach. She helps you identify and release what is getting in the way of you being fully here now - the self criticism, lack of self worth, guilt and shame. Sarah uses a unique blend of coaching tools, energy work, sound, and movement.

You can connect with Sarah here: 

Website: https://sarahchann.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sarah.chann.96

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahchann.nz/

Transcript

[00:00:00] Introduction and Meeting Sarah

[00:00:00] Cara: Hi, welcome everybody. I've got a special, special, special person to introduce you to who has a very potent spot in my heart. I'M going to tell you the really fun way that we got to meet. Sarah and I met, do you have any idea how many years ago that was? Five, five,

[00:00:22] Sarah: five,

[00:00:23] Cara: five years ago, five years ago on retreat and our dear friend, Janine was leading an incredible retreat.

And when we got to the retreat center, she had partnered us as roommates. So I walk in to meet this amazing soul and you know, when you meet soul family and it's that recognition, like we've known each other for lifetimes. And immediately I was like, Oh, Janine, good job. And she's like, I knew, I knew that wasn't an accident.

I knew. And it was the, they say beginning of a beautiful friendship, [00:01:00] but we would say continuation of a beautiful friendship.

[00:01:03] The Idea of Inviting Sarah to the Podcast

[00:01:03] Cara: So I've had the idea for a long time of having Sarah on the podcast and talking with her so that you all can experience her magic, because it is. Juicy and and different. It's such a unique flavor and I love the flavor of who you are.

And I think the world is craving more of that. So I've been excited about that. And as I was looking through the list of like podcast topic ideas and sometimes people submit questions. And I had a really juicy question in there. I'm going to read it to you so you know the specific of the question.

And then we're going to come back around to it. The specific of the question is. Can you speak to getting over God trauma, aka religious trauma, so that you can have an intimate relationship with the divine again? Which, what a juicy question. And when I was looking at all of these [00:02:00] and I had seen, Oh great, I know I want to have Sarah on and then I saw this and I was like, oh that's all one episode.

This is This is a juicy topic. And I thought, yeah, I can speak to that, but I can't speak to it from a position of having lived it in this lifetime. Certainly. I have maintained a steady relationship with God from, for always in this lifetime. So I don't, I can't speak to that fracture. I can, I have worked with many, many, many people who have, and I can tell you what I've seen and what's helped and what I know, but I know someone who can speak to it from the most intimate.

And truly masterful way. And that is Sarah. So I'm very excited about at some point in our conversation today. We're going to talk about that.

[00:02:48] Sarah's Unique Approach to Healing

[00:02:48] Cara: Um, I want Sarah to tell you a little bit about who she is, and then I'm going to fill in. If you leave any blanks,

[00:02:59] Sarah: [00:03:00] There'll probably be, there probably will be blanks. I feel like I'm not often very good at talking about what I do. But I'll tell you the work I do is all based in the body. And my favorite thing is working with people. With what is stuck in their body and it's often trauma, but we don't talk about it as trauma.

The things that happened to us in our past and often our conditioning as children. It gets stored in our body in different places. All our beliefs and our memories are stored in our body. We often think they're in our mind, but they're in our body. And so then when life gets really challenging, and that can be because we've got a sickness, or it might be just that we're not achieving what we want to, or there's disharmony in our relationships, often it's because of something we've got stuck in our body.

And so all of my work is bringing someone back to actually... What's going on inside, and let's drop down into, [00:04:00] it's often what your inner child has got sitting in there, and like, let's, let's sit with that. And I think a big part of it is actually this willingness to be present with actually what is happening right now, and to stop, like, distracting ourselves and getting busy and pulling ourselves out into this and that.

So yeah, all of my work is this coming into the body and saying, actually, what's here and how can I simply just be with it? And I think often we have, we have so much resistance to what's there, whether that's to like the emotion. Because a lot of emotions don't feel like they're safe. Or because it's something that we want to push aside and not think about what happened to us.

We resist it, resist it. And so it means that we're pushing, pushing, pushing, and so it just stays there. But when we can turn around and simply be with what's there, then it gives it a chance to shift. And it, and it [00:05:00] often moves in the most incredible ways.

[00:05:02] The Role of Divine in Healing

[00:05:02] Sarah: So yeah, that's, that's what I love to do and, and I think as well, a big part of where I'm sitting at the moment is pulling in the God piece, which is why I'm so excited about this conversation.

Because. I feel like having that belief in something larger than yourself in something that can only be termed the divine. It helps us to actually, I think, bring more grace into this process of, of sitting in these places where we feel broken and feel challenged. And where we feel like we have to fix ourselves.

And when there's the divine, we don't have to fix ourselves. We bring ourselves into this presence and the divine moves into that and helps to shift it.

[00:05:48] Cara: I just want to repeat that last thing you just said. The divine moves into that space and helps us shift it. And I feel like that's a [00:06:00] beautiful explanation for how healing works.

Right? Like, whatever, in modality, whatever. Way that you got there, whether you're aware of it or not, whether it was on purpose or not. That's the beautiful definition of how, like, we just come into this space and the divine moves in and helps to shift. And so thank you for that.

I just want to say that. Maybe we'll loop back to this if there's time and maybe it's a whole separate episode, but I think it would be fun to have a conversation at some point about the way that you have come into, the journey of you coming into your version of healing, your type of work that you do, because it is unusual and unlike anyone else's and so there isn't, like you, you know, I remember you being, many conversations throughout About like, what's even happening?

What am I even doing? What is going on? And , is it okay that I'm , this even [00:07:00] gonna work? That I'm doing something that, I mean, I know it works, but is anybody gonna want something that doesn't fall into a normal little box? Yeah. Of what they expect when people go to look for support and healing and coaching and all the things.

And I think there's a lot of people out there who would really, really, really, really get a lot out of that. So we'll see if we loop back around to that, but that's in my head, so, okay.

[00:07:26] Exploring the Concept of Fractures with God

[00:07:26] Cara: I wanna talk about

Fractures with God because I think

that, I think that so many people experience these. We have this idea that it could be because of, you know, if you were raised religious in a way that wasn't working for you or a religion that was not healthy in some way, and that was how you learned what God was.

And then, when you broke free from something that was unhealthy within that, then sort of God got thrown out with the bathwater, [00:08:00] and then people have to like, redefine or learn again what God is. So there's that like, really common pattern that we hear. There are a lot of other ways, and they don't all have to be anything to do with religion.

spoken with so many people who are angry, angry, angry at the divine for a myriad of reasons. And I think it's really common, really even healthy. Because I always say like, God doesn't mind. You can be mad. You can scream and you can cuss and you can fight and you can, and like, it will not change the love that's coming to you.

When you really understand the divine, then you know that love is unchangeable. It is, you cannot mess it up. You can't earn it. You can't not earn it. It's unchangeable. So, will you share anything that feels relevant to you? Where it comes up around that, like, the fracture that people can feel.

[00:08:55] Sarah: Sure.

[00:08:56] Sarah's Personal Experience with God and Trauma

[00:08:56] Sarah: And I think you know, I've, I grew up in a very conservative religion. [00:09:00] And, well, the honest truth is I'm still part of that today. But my view of God and how I feel that in my life has, has completely changed. And I think, I think this is the thing, and this, this goes, this speaks to your point that it can be, the fracture can occur because of something that happened within a religion, which I'm going to term that as religious trauma, and there is so much religious trauma out there, right?

But it can happen to someone that's never been in, let's say, a Christian religion. It could be anything. And that's because when we grow up as children, we model the divine, we model God on, usually on our parents, often on our father, right? Because the divine is often, especially in the Christian religion, is referred to as he or as the father.

So as children, all we can do to try to [00:10:00] understand this thing that we can't see is to model it on something that we can see. And because the divine is actually a relationship that we have, we therefore model it on the most authoritative relationship that we have, which is often, like I say, with our father, our mother will have a piece in there too.

And when you've grown up also in a religion where the people that show up in the religion set themselves up as though they're God's voice. Then as children, you start to think, okay, this is who God is. So if what you're hearing and if what you're experiencing as a child is this authoritarian do this or you're not going to be acceptable like I'm way up here as you're, you're all the way down there.

It's going to give us a very, very skewed idea of who and what God is. And so I, it's interesting, and I've talked about this with one of my sisters, [00:11:00] actually, because I've always had this deep inside me, I love God. And I, and despite how I grew up with this idea of who he was as this authoritarian, you know, we're never going to be good enough kind of idea.

There's this part deep within me that was like, I just love him. And I say him, even though I, it's easier for me just to refer to God as him, even though I see God as the true embodiment of the masculine and the feminine, and my sisters often say to me, how come you love him? You know, you're so lucky that you have that.

But I don't know, like, just something within me is always, It's always just been there and I think as well, it's helped that I'm not someone I don't hold this fixed view of this is what something is. I, I hold it always in open hands and this is my understanding right now. And [00:12:00] so again, if you listen to this, this is my understanding right now today, right?

And I'm always willing for my understanding to change as my experience in life changes or as I have different conversations. And so, I've, I've never held on to this one static, this is who God is. I was like, this is what my understanding has been. And then I reached this place a few years ago of being like, I just don't want this.

I don't want God. If this is who God is, like, it's, it's not what I'm having. I had a massive amount of anger at God, speaking to your point of anger I experienced multiple assaults as a child, sexual assaults from within the church which has created like a massive amount of, of trauma that, that I've worked to heal and I've reached this place of just absolute, so much anger at God, you know, and I really blamed him.

For what happened and not, not blamed him specifically, but for enabling, [00:13:00] like even enabling that kind of thing to happen. Like within the place where people are supposed to be loving God, right? Anyway I was just like, I'm done. And I tried to burn God out of my life. I was like, I am done. I'm totally done.

And I just couldn't. I, I could not let go of God because every time I look outside and I see creation and I see this incredible, the way that everything fits together and works together. I was like, to me, there is a creator who has, I'm looking out the window now, just, you just look at creation and it feeds, it feeds us.

And I think when you feel so fractured and so. Distance, it's pulling it down to what's the smallest or the most fundamental connection that I can find with God and how can I be, [00:14:00] actually, how can I allow God to be with me in that place. Because it loops back to what you were saying before, the divine is actually always there.

Always, always willing for us. To come right and for us to connect as we're the ones that that create the disconnect is what we're feeling And and often like pieces of like unworthiness will sit in there, too Like we don't feel worthy of this incredible incredible love because we can't understand it because we haven't experienced it and in our relationships And so it becomes this, it becomes this piece of where can I allow myself to, to experience the divine?

And for me, that was like lying down on the grass, or it was like sitting. I live like directly across from the ocean so it was just sitting on a rock and just watching the waves [00:15:00] and going actually here in this place there's something bigger than me and I don't have to do it all. I don't have to carry it all.

And I can trust that this thing that is bigger than me has got it.

[00:15:19] Cara: Thank you. Full body chills and tears when you said, I tried to burn God out of my life and I just couldn't.

I'm thinking so many things based on what you just said was so powerful and so beautiful. And I want to highlight a few things for people as they're listening. When you said, I'm someone who holds things loosely and so this is, this is how I feel about this. This was my viewpoint of it in this moment, with not only the permission, but the full expectation that this is going to shift and change.

And I just want everybody to maybe pause, even the recording as you're listening here [00:16:00] and take a second, maybe close your eyes and wonder with curiosity, what would it be like to be that? In everything in your life, all the things that you're looking at, and it's.

That piece right there could heal the world. It could heal the world. It could bring us into the space of open mindedness, which would bring us into open heartedness, which would connect us with each other, which would connect us to the divine, which would bring peace and harmony and compassion and love to the world.

That piece right there. Holding it loosely and knowing I could change my mind with the information I have in this moment. This is what I'm thinking when I have full expectation. I'm going to know something different in the next moment and the next and the next. And I might look and think differently.

And like, reality is shifting all the time. It's like this nebulous thing, because reality is based on me, not the other way around. So that was, thank you for that. [00:17:00] And one of the things I'm thinking is for anybody who's listening to this and, and you cringe every time we say, God, or your hackles go up, or you're wanting to shut this recording off.

That's so understandable, and I think one of the most beautiful, easy, powerful ways to begin to repair that relationship, because it does, I think, I think that for a lot of people there is a burning down of the old, of the story of what you thought it was, or what you were told that it was, or what you were taught that it was, and so much of this is because we're taught by people, right?

Like, we come in with this full knowing of all the things, but then we get taught by people in our lives, and did they have a very good fucking idea? Not usually. You know, we're gonna get the [00:18:00] blind leading the blind here. We're like, unless you happen to have parents with this really healthy relationship to the divine which is not probably a, the majority, then you probably got taught some really skewed shit.

Especially if it was within some kind of structure, like you said, anytime there's a this human being speaks for the divine, eh, alright, already, it's garbage, I mean, I'm sure there's some good stuff coming through, some people, for sure, for sure, for sure, for sure. And... Never, ever, ever, ever should that be your primary and only way to connect could be a way, but that's not like already.

We know something's real murky in these waters and that is what's taught across the board in so many different ways and places. And then, if you were to add in. Immense trauma like you experienced at the hands of the people who were supposed to be bringing the [00:19:00] divine into your life. I, I can't imagine a fracture bigger, honestly.

And so I feel like, tell me if this is right, when you got to the place of burning it to the ground, do you feel like you, you took it to ash and you started over with like what's actually real?

[00:19:21] Sarah: Yeah, I think so because like I say, I was just like, I'm done with all of it, but I just I just talk about creation, right?

Because that was the piece that I could not, you can't escape creation. Every time you look out the window, you're seeing this.

It's actually something we're fully in relationship with, if you... And, and I, and I love this, this image and, and I think about it often of the tree and, and this symbiotic relationship that we have with trees where we breathe in [00:20:00] what they're breathing out, and they breathe in what we breathe out.

We've been created in this way that we have to live in harmony with creation and that creation can feed us. I Don't even know how, it was just this piece that just kept, it was like this chant inside me, creation, creation, creation. It was just the only piece, and like I say, it was like this foundation that I was like, actually I can let go of every other thing that I've ever been told about God.

And I think actually this speaks to a point that we can be told all of these things. We can hold so much intellectual knowledge in our minds, right? And about God. God is this. God is that. Da da da da. But actually, what's my experience of God and how have I embodied that? What is my lived experience?

And I could [00:21:00] come back to this place of lying on the ground. And the ground held me and I'm not, it's, it's beyond like I lay on the grass and of course like there's dirt underneath and it's solid, so of course it held me. No, it was, the ground was holding me and I was feeling held and the trees, I want to say spoke to me, not words, but just the sense of we're being held, right?

And, and it's something bigger than us that we can let go into. And I don't even know if I'm making sense, because it's just this, it's a really deep, felt sense of

I don't have to do this all by myself. In fact, we shouldn't be doing this all by ourselves. [00:22:00] We don't have to fix ourselves, we don't have to fix our relationships, we don't have to fix... Whatever is going on, and I think this is my hugest lesson that I continue to learn every single day. It's actually surrender, and it's surrendering into the arms of, of love, actually.

[00:22:24] Cara: And this is the invitation that I want to share in, in, In what I'm hearing and what I know for everybody listening is that if you have this, right, if you're feeling that constriction of trauma around this, topic or the words or whatever it is.

Throw it away. Throw away the words. Throw away the story. Throw away the, everything you've been taught. And maybe for a while, just replace it with the word nature. Just [00:23:00] go straight into nature and let it be your, even when people try to talk to you about creation, source, divine, whatever else it is. Maybe you just say, you know, for now, it's just me and nature.

And be in, because it is irrefutable to me and to you, as you're saying, the, it's, such pure, divine, unconditional love energy, which is what I, I believe source is, is just the purest of unconditional love. And it's, and when you, when you're in nature, it's so easy to feel, experience, be it.

And because we are from that very, very, very tangibly. Like constantly we are, we are sloughing off cells and building new and eating and pooping. And like, we're in this like very, very real trading of Mother [00:24:00] Earth all the time and in this Mother Earth suit that we get to borrow. I think that that's a really healthy and beautiful way to come back down to the simplicity of it.

And when you talked about that piece that you've always known, you always had in you, and then even when you tried to burn it out, you couldn't burn out that piece. And to me, that's the piece you came in with. Hmm. if they could look energetically, you would see like there's the divine or, or the whatever within you.

The unconditional love, the god, the creation within you. And then there's all the other crap that got piled on top. And then you burned everything away, but that didn't go anywhere because it's you and you have always had, thank goodness, a deep and strong connection to that piece and awareness of it.

It wasn't very deep. It wasn't hidden. It wasn't unaware to you. Just there was a peeling [00:25:00] off of all the other BS and then coming home to like, what is this? And then letting that grow through the lived experience of being held and the lived experience of being in the arms. Physically in nature and in all the other ways

[00:25:14] Sarah: yeah, you know, and, and I think, because while you're, while you're speaking, I was thinking, okay, well, for someone who. Is feeling so fractured from God and like, and, and that is just piled up with all of this stuff, my question would be where in your life, can you feel or experience that the energy of something that is bigger than you?

And I think the reason why I come back to creation is because it's inescapable. And also it is outside of relationship with humans because it's actually humans that let us down. And I think this piece that I've really been thinking about a lot lately, because I've referenced my [00:26:00] anger to God, right?

[00:26:00] The Misplaced Anger Towards God

[00:26:00] Sarah: And I've had a lot of anger. So, so angry. And really recently I've been thinking, you know what, my anger's actually totally misplaced. My anger is, should be, directed at the people that perpetuated the abuse. And that perpetuated the systems wherein that kind of abuse could flourish, right? But when, and, and so I've been pondering this piece, which is really a separate conversation, but when my anger's directed there, then I feel like I actually have a responsibility to do something about it,

Whereas when my anger's directed at the divine, I'm like, well, I'll just be angry at you, and I'll just... I don't blame you, right? And then I, I don't have to do anything about that because I've just given it away to someone else. Whereas in a game, like I say, this is kind of a separate conversation, but I feel like when I'm directing it where it's, where the blame actually lies, which is on this plane, that actually I should be responsible for doing something about it.

And I can, anger is a, is a [00:27:00] energy that moves us, and I can let that anger actually do something and I can move it in a direction that. That it's actually going to make a difference. And I think that's probably where, why I feel so passionate about this conversation, and this kind of direction, because I'm really at the moment looking at the intersection between faith and trauma and, and what that does, and actually how can we stop like perpetuating these systems where God is completely misrepresented,

[00:27:35] Cara: Okay, I want... you said one thing and I want to grab a hold of it before we go down this road because this is an exciting one. You said, where can you find something that's so much bigger than you and I thought, oh, that's it right there. That's why. Sitting next to the ocean, getting to a mountain a couple of years ago when I moved [00:28:00] from Hawaii to Colorado for a while, and it was the first time I'd ever lived away from the ocean.

I grew up on the Pacific Northwest and then I lived my adult life in Hawaii and I was scared. What I've never been away from the ocean and I don't know how will I reset if I can't sit next to the ocean because to me that is a way to go and like whoosh, I'm okay again, everything's okay again. And so then I realized like I have to learn how to do that with a mountain.

It's the same, it's that bigness right that reminds us of the, the size. And scope of something that makes us feel safe, how small we are, and therefore how safe by the bigness of, and it is that feeling it's how big is sourced, how big is Mother Earth, how big is unconditional love. And if it's so big, then I'm okay.

[00:28:58] Sarah: And I, I think [00:29:00] sitting in that piece as well is that when we're feeling challenged in life, our problems, and we feel like our problems are so, so big.

What often happens is that we shrink our definition of God down to something that is smaller than our problems, God doesn't have the capacity to hold and help me through this. It's because of... Made my problem actually bigger. Whereas when we can expand that out into, like I'm saying, finding, finding the places where there's something bigger than you that you can hold. And again, I think that safety piece is huge.

Because sitting at the base of who we are as humans, and this is the piece that trauma comes in and, and interrupts, is that as humans, We are wired to want safety and connection and looking out in nature, I'm like, I can actually find both safety and connection. Like I say, lying on the ground, right?[00:30:00]

Being at the top of a mountain, sitting on the edge of the ocean, those are the places that I can find connection. And again, I know I see this before, but it's, it's a, it's connection that doesn't involve other people because people let us down. And it's other people that, that we, you know, we feel like make our problems bigger, or we say are the cause of our problems, whatever it is, right?

So we can find this safety, the sense of safety and connection outside of people by using nature, which is just there. It's there for us, right?

[00:30:37] Personification of the Divine

[00:30:37] Cara: Humans have such a tendency to personify everything. Because we only know through our lens, and so we assume that everything else is similar, right?

So I got a great story to tell you, because I feel like part of our problem is that we have personified the divine to this, like, you just said it, [00:31:00] we've shrunk it down, and in doing so, it lost all its power. When I was, I've always wondered, we hear these stories about the gods and the goddesses, and and I love to work with archetypes and archetypal goddesses and the energy of that.

But when I start to look into the history and the stories, I'm like, it loses me, it feels very false. And I'm always , I don't understand what's with this, personification of these archetypes. we Have this, this goddess that is the goddess of love, or the goddess of harvest or whatever it is.

And why did we take that beautiful archetypal energy and then muddy it up with , and then she had a backstabbing fight with her sister who slept with, so like, what the fuck? And so this past year while I was pregnant, we went on this grand trip to Italy and Greece. And we went[00:32:00] we hired a tour guide and we went through and did a bunch of these amazing tours through different places.

And we were asking lots of questions of our tour guide. And I was asking about, you know, we're here in Greece in, in, in seeing All of these places where all of the mythology came from so much of it that then became all rest and she said, you know, the ancient. Grecians did a really, really, really clever thing.

They knew that they couldn't live up to this ideal of the divine, of the gods and the goddesses. So they took them and made them more human, so that when they did fucked up stuff, Like, cheat on their wife, and then have a, whatever, and then you know, there's a whole god of drinking, and , do all these things that we're , Mmm, I don't [00:33:00] know, we should have done that, well then they were , well let's just make the gods also do it, and then therefore we don't have to feel like we're never good enough.

And I finally got it. I was like, Oh, that's what's happening. That's it. Instead of , once we realized there was the divine and then there's humans and we're here, we're messing up by not being in that thing that we think of as the divine. In order to get rid of that pedestal, we had to spring the divine down to human level to try to make ourselves not unworthy.

And it's the totally fucked up, weird, backwards way of doing what could have just been understanding our innate worthiness already. But in doing so, then you, we did exactly what you said.

We, we made God small. And then where's the safety in that?

[00:33:59] Sarah: And I, I [00:34:00] don't know, to me, I think there's something, and I think like this speaks to the type of person I am, right? Because to me, when I think about like my ultimate goal in life, and this might seem like a weird one to say, my ultimate goal in life is to be as much like God as possible, right? That, that's what I want.

I want to actually face all of the stuff inside me that is stopping like God from being able to shine out. Like from inside me. So I want, in saying that, I want God to be up here, right? Maybe it feels a little bit inaccessible, but I, I don't want God to be like on the same level, you know? Which is where all those gods and goddesses, I'm like, no, I don't, I don't want excuses for, for doing the, you know, quote unquote, the wrong thing.

[00:34:47] Understanding Sin and Alignment with God

[00:34:47] Sarah: And while you're speaking, I, I, this idea of sin popped into my head, and I feel like, People with religious trauma, sin is a huge one and, you know, this [00:35:00] idea of like we're sinful flesh and, you know, all of this, right? That if you've grown up in that kind of religion, you're going to know what I'm talking about.

And again, it's this idea that I've really been playing with lately, where if you look at the idea of sin, the word sin actually means to miss the mark. And so I just keep playing with this idea of actually all sin is, is when we're out of alignment with God. And we all end up out of alignment for different reasons, right?

And so, instead of going, oh, I'm so sinful. No, we say, actually, you know what? I was out of alignment, but I'm choosing to come back into alignment. And this is the piece for me where, what pushes me out of alignment is this childhood conditioning. And the, you know, the, the traumas that have occurred that, that mean that I end up, you know, mucking up, or not doing what I, what I want to do, right?

So then I'm like, okay. What's the piece? What's the belief that's sitting inside me that is keeping me from going out of [00:36:00] alignment? Okay, I'll work with that, change that belief so then I can come more into alignment. Whatever that piece of the divine is and I think you know sometimes you know looking at who or what the divine is is huge like it's actually beyond our comprehension.

So, I think sometimes again, it's taking, okay, what is the piece that I can make accessible for me, and, and I keep thinking about love, right, which love is just a massive, massive thing, but how can I be more love in my life, and where are the places where I'm stopping myself from being love, which is the places that are pushing me out of alignment with, with who God is.

So it's, instead of going, well, like I say, I want to be more like God, but whoa, like, what is that? Okay. I can pull it down to this piece at the moment where I'm focusing on love [00:37:00] and where can I allow myself to receive that? Where can I look around and see that at work in other people's lives and use that as evidence that actually if it's working for them, it can work for me,

Like pulling it down into a thread that we can work with, as opposed to feeling like it's just this huge thing that we can't grasp and, well, we'll never be good enough and we'll never, like, reach up there. No, like, what is the, what's the one thread I can grab hold of? And start to, I'm going to start to weave that into my life.

[00:37:34] Childhood Experiences and Personal Beliefs

[00:37:34] Cara: This is, this whole conversation has me thinking about in my childhood. And, and, you know, as often happens, I have to give props to my mom. So props mom.

Because I, I'm pretty sure at some point in my childhood, she said to me, you get to decide what is God. What is all this stuff? What is as we [00:38:00] started to get a little bit older and understand that, like, I had different friends and they were going, they were going to different churches and religion, religious things.

And I would hear things that I would be like, well, that's doesn't seem right. Well, this doesn't feel good. I don't like this idea of a devil. That's real scary. But sometimes I remember her saying, like, you get to decide, you get to choose what's your. And then that just like brought immediate peace because I didn't, I was like, Oh, well, great.

Perfect. Because I, I didn't grow up with this. I mean, I, I imagine she must've told me some things, but mostly I think I just understood what she was understanding and, and I, so I don't think I had to lose because I didn't have a stimulus coming in telling me the opposite of what I knew. I had this born in knowledge that we all have.

Of everything. [00:39:00] And then I didn't have a lot of stimulus coming in saying something else. You know, it wasn't like it didn't exist in our household. There was, my mom was in meditation and prayer and study and in her things. There wasn't this, like, this is what it is and this is what's right. And this is what you have to believe and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And those are the people who are going to tell you didn't have any of that. And so I was older by the time I started to like. see little bits of that. And I was like, I, my discernment was very strong. And I was like, no, nope, I choose not that. That's scary as hell. I choose not that. I choose not when I would go to church with friends.

Sometimes,

I wanna, I wanna lie to you and say sometimes it was fun. That's not fucking true. Most of the time I was shit terrified when I would go. [00:40:00] I was like, they're gonna hold me underwater and they're gonna baptize me. They're gonna know that I don't, I'm not part of this. I'm not in this weird club, and I, my bangs aren't styled the right way.

That was a whole, like, one church, like, you had to have your bangs styled. I get it. Oh, I get it. Right? Okay. Like, I showed up, and I was like, oh, I don't fit in here, and they're going to know, because I don't have the right bangs. And it was, you know, the 90s, so there was, like, this big teen thing right here, you know, like, just the permed, teen, 14 cans of hairspray bangs.

Which is just a style. I had nothing, I don't think, to do with the religion. It just was a style. But I was looking around and I was like, this kid trying to figure this out. I was like, what the fuck is happening? I'm scared of this. Like, I don't understand. Because the, the, like. Specifically, The Divine, to me, was always so easy, and so what is all this extraneous stuff with, like, the rules and the stories and the scary [00:41:00] things, and why are we coloring pictures of a guy with nails?

What's, this is so scary, like, what is all this weird, , aggressiveness of this? And then you want to balance out by saying it's okay because you're going to give me juice and cookies. And I'm like, that's not a fair trade. Like, this is, I don't, I don't want to go back there. And I would come home and be like, mom, I don't want to go back there.

And she's like, that's fine. You don't have to go. You asked to go with your friend because you want to spend time with your friend. And then you don't have to go back. And so then eventually sometime later, some other friend would be like, come with me to this church. And some of them were scarier than others.

But the discernment within me was already there because I wasn't fed anything when I was young in that way. So again, props mom. Except what she did tell me was a constant, like, you can go directly to God with this. You can go directly to God with this. And there wasn't [00:42:00] a rule on how that looked or whatever, but it was like a reminder and an invitation,

I think, but I remember a conversation. I remember conversations. I remember the understanding of where I fit into the universe, I guess, in this great, , if I wouldn't say it that way as a kid, but in some understanding of way, I remember that as a mom, how do you feel now not to take us in a completely alternate direction, but.

I just think about how lucky for your kids that you have always had that unshakable thing within you. That's something I want to, I want to a button I want to tell to people is like, if you've had this trauma or whatever, if you have the anger or the confusion or the disbelief or anything else, look for that.

Seed, , see if you can get down to the thing that you couldn't burn away, we're [00:43:00] describing, because it's not only Sarah and I have this, like, this is everything, you know, like, it's all, you've got it there. So what would it be like to maybe find that and then build a whole new awareness based on this piece?

So I keep thinking how lucky your kids are because you have that and you emanate it. Fucking powerfully, I can speak to that in everything that you do and see and be and are, and so they're growing up with that. Anything else doesn't matter because they're growing up with that. Which I guess is also, I should say again, thanks to my mom, because that's what I learned.

Like, I don't remember whatever she did say or didn't say. That was the piece that

[00:43:47] Sarah: that I know. And I know and, and you know, like you've spoken so powerfully how she said to you, you choose, and to me it sits with this piece where we have to learn to be comfortable with not [00:44:00] knowing. Which loops back to the whole thing of I hold things loosely.

We have to hold things loosely because, we only know what we know right now, but we do, we know that. But do we actually know that? And I think a lot of people sit in this place where, they're very fixed in what they think because that brings a sense of safety to them,

if I know that, God is this or that, or that people are this, this, this and that, there's a sense of safety in going, right, I've got it pegged. I can live my life to knowing that this is what it is. Whereas, sitting in this place of not knowing and surrendering to not knowing opens you up and can feel really unsafe.

Because what might happen, right?

[00:44:50] The Fear of God's Rejection

[00:44:50] Sarah: What happens if I let go of this, I've been taught that this is who God is, whoa, what happens if I let go of that? And what happens if [00:45:00] God rejects me because I've let go of what I've been told that He is? That's a huge thing for people to have to come to terms with, have to be present with.

Yeah.

[00:45:17] Cara: Oh, I'm just sitting with the weight of what that must be like to have, to be afraid of what if God rejects me. I had an experience when I was a little girl. I have not had that experience. Of happening to be afraid of what if God rejects me, and I think it was because of this moment when I was little, I'm trying to see if I could guess how old I was.

I don't tell this story very often, only because it's very hard to put into words.

So I was older than six. I think we moved into that I remember the house that I was in. So I think we moved there when I was six so older than six. Maybe I was eight or 10 and I remember having a night where [00:46:00] I, something had me really, really, really, really upset in, and in like a big way, not in like a little kid way.

I think I maybe I was mad at God about something, or I don't remember what the conversation was. But I think it was like me saying, like, you're not there or, or, or something. And I remember God said, do you want to know?

And I wanted, like, I don't even believe or I something. And it wasn't in words, but it was like, yeah, I want to know, like, prove it to me. And so for one moment God stopped being God.

And it was a split second and it felt like it was like for one second God just like held the tap of the flow of unconditional love and it [00:47:00] was like I was a seed of nothingness floating in the universe and there was nothing and there was no air. There was no...

and in a less than a second, less than just a fraction of a second of it was all back and I knew I would never again be able to doubt That the divine is in everything, in everyone, it is always with me, it is always everything.

We say that everything is the divine, in that moment I felt the absence of everything. And therefore I knew that everything I feel, everything I can sense, and I have this wildly heightened sensing system. So I am aware of the fucking universe, and all of a sudden, everything was gone. Everything I could sense.

And that, and that includes like eternalness, my eternalness, [00:48:00] the forward and backward of time, the whole expanse of everything, my place in it, the, the, the grandness of being an immortal soul, like the depth of all those things that I inherently can feel on some level, even though I could never put.

I don't think about them all the time and whatever. That was fucking gone for one second. And it wasn't even scary because it happened so fast. And it wasn't, it wasn't malevolent, wasn't mean, it wasn't, it came from pure love and because I asked. Show me, fucking prove it to me, I wanna know, or whatever it was, I said, I don't know, like, tell me what it's like without, I don't know what I said, or why I don't remember why I was mad, I just so clearly remember, and so there is, it's so unshakable for me truly, truly, truly, everything that ever is, and could ever be, is the divine, and I felt it so [00:49:00] greatly in that moment.

[00:49:01] Finding Connection with the Divine

[00:49:01] Sarah: Yeah, you, you've, you've made me realize um, and I think because I, This is probably quite present for me because a couple of weeks ago I did a sound journey and within that sound journey I went through a death and a rebirth cycle and, and I died in it and again experienced that sense of nothingness, there's just nothing and ended up when the rebirth happened again it was reconnecting into that sense of like everything is connected.

And we are connected, and I know I keep looking out we've got two magnificent trees out in our front yard, which I look at a lot because, again, I, I, I was speaking right at the start about that connection that we have with trees, and I was [00:50:00] thinking, okay, as you were speaking, I was thinking, what about the person that is listening to this that has never actually experienced that energetic connection with something outside of themselves?

And so where does that person sit? Because, and I think, actually that's who I used to be and I can't, I don't even know how or when I first felt this connection that's outside of us, right? We are actually all walking around in this fully energetically connected state with each other. With nature and with other people. And so I can't speak to, actually, what's, what's the piece that's going to help you to feel that. I can't, because I can't think when that developed for me.

But for the person that's listening to this, [00:51:00] that thinks, I want that and I don't have it, like, I feel like I'm separate.

I would ask, and this might be a random question, but do you have a cat or a dog that you love, right? Do you have some kind of animal? Or even a plant that, that you love and that you can just sit with. And this might sound really bizarre, but start to feel the ways in which you are connected to that animal beyond just this, I can see the cat or the dog in my house, right?

Where's the piece where you're like, actually, I love that animal and I'd grieve for that animal if they were gone. And start to see if you can feel some kind of connection between you and it. And, and I think that's also why I talk about trees, is coming out and even putting your hands on the ground or on the tree and start to just, and you, and, and saying all [00:52:00] this, right?

When you haven't had this, you'd be like, this is really weird. This is what, like, why would I do this? I feel really stupid. I feel stupid putting my hand on a tree and being like, I want to connect with the tree. So there's a part of you that has to be willing to feel foolish and to. And to sit in this place of, I don't know if this will work, and I've done it and it doesn't feel like it's worked, right?

But coming back to it again and again, with this willingness, I, I hold this piece all the time actually, where, where God says, if you seek me, you'll find me, right? That's a promise that, that he's made. If you seek me, you'll find me. And, and holding this place, okay, I don't feel any connection with anything outside of myself.

I've got this image of God where he is like this powerful being that is judging me and rejecting me. But I want to change that and I don't know how. I'm just going to sit in this peace of actually, [00:53:00] God, I want to see you in a different light. I don't know how to. I'm just going to put my hand on this tree or on this dog or on this, on the ground, whatever it is.

And I'm just going to breathe. And I'm just going to feel my breath going in and out of my body. And when I do this, I like to imagine that it's, that that energy is going out and coming back to me and just being like, maybe I can't feel anything. I feel really stupid doing this. Right? But I want to learn to see differently.

And I'm just going to sit in this place of, you know what, I'm like a baby that's learning to walk and I'm just going to keep tripping over tripping over and I don't get it. I don't get it. But I'm willing. And I think sometimes that's, that's actually all we can sit with is this. I'm willing to see things differently and, and I have to know.

That sometimes that means there's going to be a magic wand and something will change straight away. But more often than not, it is [00:54:00] the tiniest, tiniest shift that happens really slowly and can feel really frustrating because it's not happening straight away. But it's the willingness to see or experience or feel something different that is actually what is going to end up helping us to see something different, even if it takes way, way longer than we want it to.

[00:54:25] Cara: Thank you for that. I think that I think that through our pets, I mean, I really feel like they are here to be our teachers and our sort of stewards and usher us through all things the little messengers of the divine, so I think that's a perfect invitation for people.

[00:54:47] The Journey of Healing and Transformation

[00:54:47] Cara: Would you tell a little bit about the work that you're doing right now because I want people to know about it and about how they can work with you, but also, you [00:55:00] know, these evolutions of the things that you're putting out.

[00:55:04] Sarah: It's always evolutions. I think, again, that comes to. The learning and the growing.

Every experience, I hope, grows us. at The moment, um, well I offer one to one to work. But I, at the moment I'm running a prayer circle, which I'm going to run again next year. Which is about, this whole piece that we've been speaking about. Actually, what... It's stopping us, because all prayer is, is communication with the divine.

So what's getting in the way of that, and so often it's our stuff. It's our stuff that gets in there. So, so how can we start to look at that stuff and let it dissolve or shift it or, or put it in the place where it's supposed to be instead of in the way of this connection.

[00:55:52] The Power of Love and Self-Worth

[00:55:52] Sarah: But a piece that I'm developing at the moment is just working away in my subconscious, which.[00:56:00]

Yeah, early 2024, I want to, want to launch this as I want to be running a group program that's actually around connecting and with love and we've referenced how the divine actually is love, but we often sit in this piece of unworthiness and often in the Christian tradition, we taught that we shouldn't love ourselves,

but when we don't love ourselves, that actually gets hugely in the way of us being able to serve. We can't serve others when we're stuck in this piece of, I'm not good enough. And, and we, our own inadequacies like rise up, they actually become bigger than God, right? We, we put our inadequacy and lack of self worth in front of anything that we're able to achieve.

So yeah, that's, that's this other piece, this piece of work that I'm going to be putting out into the world of actually, how can we let true love like the divine come in and heal this piece of us. That feels so, deeply [00:57:00] unworthy and it, it's the piece that stands in the way of true connection as well.

[00:57:07] Cara: I'm so excited about all the things that you're doing and I want to encourage everybody to reach out and follow along with what you've got going on.

I will say that I am maybe, and because I can be, the most discerning and picky and spoiled. In a good way person when it comes to who I'm going to work with as who I will receive healing from, because I, well, my, my standard is unbelievably high.

And when you have the ability to do healing work yourself, then like, why would you go bother going to anybody else? Unless there's something like really fun and delightful and wonderful that they can give, that, you know, is, and I love, love, [00:58:00] love sessions with Sarah all through the experience of trying to get pregnant and working through all of that.

I would have these amazing sessions with her that would just, it was I didn't have to do anything. Just be there and lay on the floor. The most effort I had to do was push the go button on Zoom. The most effort. I don't even know if I ever even pushed the stop button at the end.

I usually just lay there and you were like, I don't know if you can really look at it. I just lay there in bliss. After you've unwind all this amazing stuff, and we didn't have to like, dig into it, and we didn't have to know what it was, and we didn't have to talk about it, and we didn't have to, you know, all the things.

And a lot of times, like, we don't want to do all that crap. We just want to unwind. And you have this way of unwinding for [00:59:00] people. That is like, so good. So I want I want everyone to know that working with you is miraculous.

[00:59:08] Sarah: Thank you. Thank you so much. It's very kind. Do you know, and I think, to me it's, it's allowing something bigger than me to move through,

and allowing myself to be a vessel for and I know in this case we're specifically talking about sound healing, which is a beautiful way that vibration can come in and just shift. And, and be with what's happening in the body. anD I think it pulls back to this, this piece that I'd say to everyone, and I think it's one of our biggest lessons is actually, can I be with what's here right now?

Can I simply be with it without expectation, without trying to change it, [01:00:00] just surrendering into this moment and what's present. And that's actually when we open ourselves up to that true connection. Where we can let, I feel like we can let God move through us and, that's the place where healing occurs when we can open up and let God move through us.

[01:00:23] Cara: And I feel like you have become such an incredible conduit for that unconditional love. And I can say that being in a session with you feels much like you were describing being held as you laid on the grass that day. It feels much like that. And if you could imagine trauma in your body, like Stiffness or tightness, but like much deeper than just muscular and you have this way of going in and like a really skilled massage therapist would

Lovingly allow the muscles to let go you go in with voice and energy [01:01:00] and you let the trauma let go. And it's so fucking cool and it's been such a privilege to watch you. You know, you've done the study you, you did master your magic. We did lots of courses together. We did lots of things.

You've done lots of like study and work. And I've gotten this front row seat to watching you, like, not, not develop, I want to say, like, step into, unfurl, uncover, discover your very unique, particular way of doing and feeling, and it's unlike anything else. And it's so cool. And I know it wasn't easy because you didn't just say okay you know, I, I went out and I learned Reiki and now I do Reiki or whatever.

You had to like, well, how do I even explain this? How do I even talk about it? What even is it? Are people going to understand? Like it's different than anything that's out there. And, and that was [01:02:00] really, really fun to watch you on that journey and really you're just a, you're just a conduit you are someone who knows in a very specific way how to transmute source and unconditional love in a way that unwinds trauma without making anyone go through their trauma,

Which, I mean, is ideal, in my opinion.

Absolutely.

It's the ideal way to go through the stuff that you want to happen, to go through it.

[01:02:28] Sarah: Yes. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

[01:02:30] Final Thoughts and Reflections

[01:02:30] Sarah: I love you. Thank you so much for having this conversation with me.

[01:02:39] Cara: I hope that so many people got so much out of it. I know it was

[01:02:44] Sarah: really, really, really, really special for me.

Oh, like, you know, I've, I've loved every part of it and I love that the conversation just goes where it needs to go and, and I feel like even if you only get one thing out of this [01:03:00] whole conversation, just sit with that one thing and you know, I feel like sometimes we feel like we need to know the whole picture.

I need the solution, but there is no solution. All there is, is just being in taking the one piece that worked, that, that came to you and just sit with it.

[01:03:20] Cara: That's good. I think people, it's nice to be reminded because what I also heard and what you were saying was like, you are whole. The reminder that we all are wholeness already.

[01:03:30] Sarah: Thank you. I love you so much. I love you too.

[01:03:34] Cara: Everybody, we will make sure that in the show notes for this episode, there's all the ways to get in touch with Sarah and please do so.

We're gonna put a, a meditation in the show notes.

We have some really, really good meditations for connecting to the unconditional love.

So we'll put some of those or something in the show notes to give people a [01:04:00] uh, a spa an easy thing to just like grab a hold of, so it'll be there as a resource.

Thank you, Sarah. Thank you.

Please let me know your thoughts! Like, Share, and Comment below <3, Cara

cara hollenbeck

 

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